I am about to walk you through a wacky metaphor. Consider yourself warned.

Imagine your life as a salad. It’s made up of all the different ingredients of you—your work, your family, your relationships, your mental state, the places you inhabit, the ideas you surround yourself with, the stuff you do for fun.

The first thing to remember about salads is that there are a whole lot of different kinds of salads. In fact, there are almost zero rules when it comes to salads. You can add pretty much whatever ingredients you feel like adding and it is still a salad. Fruit salad. Egg salad. Chicken salad. Arugula-goat cheese-cranberry salad. The possibilities are endless!

So why would your Metaphorical Life Salad be any different? It’s not! You can put whatever the heck you want into it. So if you are one of those weird people (like my brother) whose idea of a delicious salad is just a pile of plain lettuce, make yourself a big ol’ just-lettuce salad and make your inner rabbit proud. I, however, am most definitely not a member of the just-lettuce camp. The more non-lettuce ingredients, the better, I say. Why not add some star fruit, for example? That sounds fun and exciting!

In reality, though, the name Starfruit Salad did not come about because I all of a sudden thought up this thoughtful and genius metaphor. I also didn’t choose the name because I love to eat star fruit. While I am a huge proponent of including star fruit in my Metaphorical Life Salad, I have never actually put it in a Real Life Food Salad. I have no idea whether that would be good or not. I don’t even know what a star fruit tastes like.

What actually happened was this: the name popped into my head several years ago and I thought it had a nice ring to it. I like words and I like thinking about words that sound good together. Like “leafy peacock” and “skywriting operettas,” for example. True story: I have both of those phrases written down in a notebook somewhere because I thought they were just too good to let go. I chose “Starfruit Salad” instead of one of these other gems because I feel like it fits my aesthetic and was an opportunity to draw what I think is a pretty cool logo. Also it has to do with food, which I like.

Most importantly, Starfruit Salad represents my desire to build a delicious and beautiful life. Why make a salad out of iceberg lettuce and sad, mealy tomatoes when I can make one out of star fruit? What started out as a seemingly random combination of words turned out to be a fitting symbol of the journey I’m on and the story I want to share.

So let’s do this! I’m off to make a delectable salad. I’ll get back to and let you know how it turned out. Until next time,

Maria

p.s. I do intend to draw a leafy peacock at some point because that would be awesome.